The first year-round clean up session at Tanah Merah (site 7) took place yesterday! With 34 of us all geared up and raring to go, the team bagged 340kg *302kg (not inclusive of bulky items) worth of trash and marine debris, along the 250 metres stretch of beach, in a span of 90 minutes!
A pity I didn't take more photos. But I'm quite sure the others did! Meet the rest of the team! And posing with CNY deco.
Also, browse through Siva's post if you haven't already! In which, he explains succinctly why there is a need for year-round clean up (YRCC) sessions and how this very first YRCC at Tanah Merah was more of a trial to assess the preparedness of newly-recruited organisers.
A visibly cleaner shore. Well done, friends!
Expectedly, plastic bags/packaging made up a large proportion of the trash collected. Drinking straws were also strewn all over the shore, some half-buried in the sand. Plastic debris is the predominant form of litter in almost all census studies of shore litter around the world. Recreational trash or litter from shore-based activities constitutes about 80% of total marine litter.
Doesn't it make sense to claim that if we were to shy away from the disposable culture, that is sadly encouraged by our "throw-away society", we can dramatically reduce the amount of marine debris that ends up in the water bodies and along coastlines? And as a result, implicate less lives?
"Of the 120 marine mammal species listed on the IUCN Red List 54% are known to have been entangled in or have ingested plastic debris." via
"In addition to ingestion and entanglement, beach debris can affect behavior of intertidal organisms (Aloy et al. 2011) and adversely affect the ability of turtle hatchlings to reach the sea (Ozdilek et al. 2006)." via
The concept of marine litter implicating wildlife can be grasped by most, though some limited to visible observations.
"Plastic debris is fragmenting in the environment and pieces as small as 2μm have been detected (Ng & Obbard 2006)." via
Another aspect to plastic pollution is highlighted in the following TED talk by Van Jones.
The Economic Injustice of Plastic Pollution
"Van Jones frames plastic pollution in terms of social justice. Plastic trash affects poor people and poor countries “first and worst.”" via
Most of all, if there's one thing I'd like to emphasise on, it's the idea that we can turn things around!
Some simple and immediate actions include:
- Stop using straws
- Avoiding plastic-bottled beverages
- Buying products with minimal or reusable packaging
- Buying in bulk whenever possible to reduce packaging
- Buying used items
- Seeking out reusable shopping and produce bags like those made from renewable sources (e.g. natural fibres) and always bringing them along
- For coffee and or tea – bring your own mug
- For food – bring your own container
Don't underestimate the seemingly small and simple actions you take!
"Because as long as we make leadership something bigger than us, as long as we keep leadership something beyond us, as long as we make it about changing the world, we give ourselves an excuse not to expect it everyday from ourselves, and from each other."
"... we've made leadership about changing the world, and there is no world. There's (are) only 6 billion understandings of it. And if you change one person's understanding of it, one person's understanding of what they're capable of, one person's understanding of how much people care about them, one person's understanding of how powerful an agent for change they can be in this world - You change the whole thing."
"Every single one of you have been a catalyst for a lollipop moment."
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*Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:08:12 +0800
**Wed, 15 Feb 2012 22:48:24 +0800
Further readings:
**"Marine Litter - A Global Challenge" talk by Dr. Ellik Adler
Continue reading ""Every single one of you have been a catalyst for a lollipop moment."" »
